Princess in Repose
by Amorissy
Summary: One shot.  Post series.  It's very easy.  Wake, wash, dress.  She remembers this part.  A Tin Man Challenge fic.


**Author's Note**: Written for the Fourth Annual "Big Damn Challenge" at tm_challenge on Livejournal. For my girl B, who wanted to see it.

**Prompt: **_Paint_

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><p><strong>Princess In Repose<strong>

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><p>It's very easy.<p>

Wake, wash, dress. She remembers this part. She's clumsy with buttons, worse with bows, but there are women who help her each morning, quiet mousy women who won't meet her eyes, women who wear her mother's crest on their aprons. She hears them speak in hushed voices before she rises, but she can never make out their words. It might be that it's better that way.

She eats. Most days, she eats alone. There are times when DG joins her, but those days are rare now, and she doesn't mind that either, though it saddens her in some inexplicable way. She finds a lot of things inexplicable, though she'd never come out and _say _that. She minds her tongue. Better that way, too.

She has questions, but has yet to form them. She can feel them tugging at her, some force inside of her that twinges and nags and follows her day in and day out. Even if she _knew_, could put to words that uneasiness inside, that _unknowing_, she knows it'd be futile to try. No one has answers, least of all for her.

She presents herself very well, she learned that when she was learning to walk, it's not hard to make her smile appear demure and her hands graceful. It's very easy to sit still, still as a portrait, though who would paint her, who could ever look upon her and see anything but horror and hunger and pain. These are her thoughts as she sits, bitter and mean, eating her up a little bit at a time, but it's all right because her smile is pretty and her hands are folded in her lap just as she was shown, so many annuals ago that she doesn't actually remember learning. Someone taught her, she's sure. No one is born with hands folded in their lap. Maybe she was.

She sees people. Most won't look at her, not in the eye, no, but she _sees _them. She watches as she's always done, quiet little princess, not so little now but it doesn't matter because she knows how to sit with her face turned away. She watches at the edge of her vision. People don't notice her, at least not right away, on account of how quiet she is, how still she sits. Perhaps not a portrait, but a statue, carved from stone and unchanging. She likes that idea: _unchanging. _

Everything around her is changing so fast.

There are new faces every day. Some she recognises, but most she doesn't; she's always been good with faces, with eyes and smiles, but she hasn't seen much of either in all the faces that parade past her. She digs into the depths of her memory, but she comes up empty, and she doesn't like that. She doesn't like the strangeness, the uncertainty of all these faces, all these faces with minds so tidily caught up in their heads, secret to everyone but themselves. Once, they say, she pried the memories from ally and enemy alike so that she might know it all, but she doesn't remember.

She doesn't remember much of _anything_. There's blackness in her mind where her secrets ought to be, but it's hidden away somewhere or maybe it's gone or maybe it never existed. She wishes it were so, but the whispers of the maids as they clean her rooms come back to her and she knows that there is darkness and evil behind her just as they say it was _within _her, taken over and rooted deep.

When she sleeps, she thinks – well, she doesn't quite know what to think, but she _thinks _her dreams might remember. There are glimpses as she awakens, quick flashes, random insertions, a face or a place or _something_, and then there's nothing but bright light behind the draperies and a heaviness inside her that sends her rushing to empty her stomach of nothing but bile and guilt and endless, endless questions. Those mornings, she doesn't eat much, but still rises, washes, dresses. That's the easiest part.

She spends her days listening. No one comes to see her, no one but her sister and her father; the rare occasion brings her mother or Ambrose, but those times are so few and far between that sometimes she fancies that she imagines the entire thing. She knows _she_ used to visit her mother, when the _other_ had hold of her, somehow it's _her_ and not the _other_ that made the visits, and no one but her is there to make that distinction, though she never says it aloud. There are so many things she never says aloud. Who would do the listening?

DG would, she knows, but her sister's head is full of it's own problems, and she has her own secrets to tend to, to draw out and heal just as she must. There's success where her sister attempts, though, while she herself meets with only recurrence and failure. She cries sometimes, when no one is looking; she thought once that perhaps no one ever looked, that no one ever saw, but she was dead wrong. They look, they _see_, but only when she's turned away, when they think it's safe. So she saves her tears for when she's truly alone, but she cannot control them when they come; she wants to, tries to, but she can't, and she knows that it's not better. She never cried before.

A dangerous word, that _before_. Almost as dangerous as _other_, at least to her, but _before_ can touch everyone, not just her, but all around her, from her mother so small in throne so large straight down to the girls who change her sheets and whisper when they think they're safe. No one is safe. Safe from her now, safe from the _other_, but not from _before. _Everyone struggles, not just her, and she must remember that, for she is so infinitesimally small among the great hearts that strive to put right what she brought to wrong, _before_.

Of all the faces she sees, she can tell them true. She knows her sister smiles the brightest because she tries the hardest. She knows her father laughs because he's finally remembering how. She knows the nightmares that colour circles under Ambrose's eyes, and the discomfort of the Tin Man as he hovers about the edges of this new order world. This is not his world. It's not hers, either, but still she wakes, and rises.

She keeps to herself, and waits for those who would seek her out. Someone always comes, the reason varying with the body, but always a reason, never just because. She doesn't mind that, she's never lived a just-because life, everything has reason and forever will. She doesn't believe in destiny but she believes in reason. She doesn't know what she thinks about prophecy, so she just tries not to think about that at all.

DG always wants to walk, and she enjoys that. She isn't expected to talk as they wander the same old route through the gardens of their city spire. Everything is dead, all rusted and broken, life drained away to naught but dry dust, but it doesn't bother her and it doesn't bother her sister. This is their world of decay. Really, she imagines her sister doesn't see what's around her as she walks, for as she walks she talks, and her mind is where her words are, worlds away. Her sister's world is another that will never belong to her, but she's glad of that the more she hears DG tell. She's in a safe place, here.

Sometimes, Ambrose brings her things, things wrought of metal and magic; not _true_ magic, his trinkets hold no power of their own, but the beauty of them, these tiny marvels made by careful, steady hand is a type of magic that she's quite certain is lost in this world, her world, and she wants it so bad that she can taste the coppery promises on the tip of her tongue. Sometimes, he forgets to take his creations with him – and sometimes never remembers he left them behind – and it's then that she claims the treasure and hides it away. It wouldn't do to have anyone know she kept them so close; sometimes it's all right to have a little secret.

More often now, her father comes to see her, breaking into her solitude with a smile and a song. It's a before tune; he hums as he walks up, and she likes that she can hear him coming so that when he reaches her, her smile might be a real one. He fills her silence with his voice long into the evening. Sometimes, he smokes emerald cigarettes and the green haze that hangs around his face scares her; the smoke goes to his heart and his stories turn dark. Sometimes, his stories turn to histories, twisted and lonely, and she doesn't want to believe him, but then it ends, and she sleeps and dreams and wakes panicked, and there's a memory swimming in her blackness, a memory with fine-tipped edges and a swirl of colour. She rises.

Time seems to stand still for her, these marching days of endless watching, but beyond her walls and windows, a world goes on and on and on. There's war in the outer realms, places where people fight for the land they stand on and not for a queen most have never laid eyes on. Some days she hears of victories and others she hears of loss, but it's all the same to her because the fighting rages on as she's sequestered in these walls and people fight for her _reasons_, her's and no one else's. The blame is heavy on her shoulders but she bears it gladly. But for this weight she would be nothing at all.

There's talk of storm clouds darkening the horizon, but she fears no storm, for she knows she is the storm, somewhere forgotten within herself. She has no choice in her existence, it was all meted out for her, she thinks sometimes she'd rather have died, but those are dark days, unforgiving days. She's come to expect them, learned not to fear them. It wouldn't do to be fearful.

She wonders if they mean to destroy her. She wonders if her very presence puts her family in danger. So much goes on beyond the walls of the city. Here, she hides behind her mother's goodness, barely an entity. A shadow, maybe, lingering at the edges of the light. She is not without darkness, but not the darkness itself, she swears. Daily, she reassures them with what semblance of humanity remains to her. She smiles, and sighs, and sits so still; a portrait painting, a statue, she is _princess in repose_. She knows she will not do the convincing, and she finds she doesn't mind. She is... tired.


End file.
